What Sam Altman Just Taught Us About OKRs (Without Meaning To)

Yesterday, Sam Altman declared a “code red” at OpenAI. According to leaked memos, he’s pausing advertising experiments, AI shopping agents, health assistants, and a personal assistant called “Pulse.” All so the company can focus on making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, and more personal.

Why? Google’s Gemini 3 just topped the LMArena leaderboard with a historic 1501 Elo score—the first model to break 1500. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted “Just spent two hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane.”

Altman’s response tells us exactly what OpenAI considers core to their survival versus what they consider strategic experiments. And it’s a perfect illustration of something I teach in Radical Focus: the difference between Health Metrics and OKRs, and what happens when you call a Code Red.

Health Metrics vs. OKRs: What You Protect vs. What You Push

OKRs are stretch goals. They’re the “shoot for the moon” efforts where you’re trying to create step-change improvement. But not everything in your business needs to be pushed. Some things need to be protected.

That’s where Health Metrics come in.

Health Metrics are the handful of numbers that tell you your business is still healthy while you’re chasing ambitious goals. Revenue. Customer satisfaction. Code stability. Team wellbeing. These aren’t things you’re trying to dramatically improve this quarter—they’re things you absolutely cannot afford to let slip.

I recommend tracking Health Metrics with a simple green/yellow/red system:

• Green means all fine, keep doing what you’re doing
• Yellow means keep a watch out, something’s shifting
• Red means something critical to your company’s survival is in freefall

What Happens When a Health Metric Goes Red

At any time—not just in your Monday check-in—anyone can call a “Code Red” for a Health Metric in the red zone. When that happens, you prioritize fixing it (or finding a path to a fix) over OKR efforts.

This is exactly what Altman just did.

For OpenAI, having the most capable AI model isn’t a strategic goal they’re pushing toward. It’s existential. It’s what they are. When Gemini 3 started beating ChatGPT on benchmarks and users started spending more time with the competition, that Health Metric went red.

So what got paused? The strategic experiments. The ads. The shopping agents. The new features. All the stuff that would have been OKR-level work—pushing into new territory, experimenting with new revenue streams.

That’s Code Red in action.

What OpenAI’s Priorities Tell Us

Look at what got paused and what didn’t, and you can reverse-engineer what any company considers core versus strategic:

Paused (Strategic/OKRs):

• Advertising products
• AI shopping and health agents
• ChatGPT Pulse (personalized daily updates)

Prioritized (Health Metric in crisis):

• Model capability and quality
• Speed and reliability
• Core ChatGPT experience

This tells us OpenAI believes their moat is model quality, not monetization experiments. Ads were nice-to-have. Being the best model is survive-or-die.

How to Use This in Your Own Company

Keep your Health Metrics to a minimum—three to five is enough. Pick the things that, if they cratered while you were focused on your ambitious OKRs, would seriously damage the business. Common ones include:

• Customer satisfaction
• Revenue/runway
• Code health (ignore this and watch your technology start crashing)
• Team health (ignore this and expect burnout followed by mass departures)

Review them weekly. Mark them green, yellow, or red. And when something goes red? You have permission—actually, you have an obligation—to pause your strategic work and fix it.

Calling a Code Red does two important things: it formally notifies everyone that OKR work is on hold, and it creates a record. When you do your end-of-quarter retrospective, you can look at your Code Reds to understand what keeps preventing you from reaching your potential.

Some quarters, you’ll have none. Some years—like 2020 for many companies—feel like one long Code Red. But if you survive, you’ll want to learn from those crises and reinvest in making yourself more resilient.

Track everything. Call the red when you see it. And remember: OKRs are what you push. Health Metrics are what you protect. Knowing the difference might save your company.

For more on Health Metrics, the weekly cadence, and how to actually make OKRs work, check out Radical Focus.